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BT Updates on UK G.fast, SoGEA and “Slow Speed” Broadband Plans

Tuesday, Feb 2nd, 2016 (2:51 pm) - Score 9,694

BT has revealed some interesting new information on their UK plans for deploying ultrafast 300-500Mbps G.fast broadband technology, as well as SoGEA’s trial status, a possible extension of VDSL (FTTC) Vectoring, a new 18Mbps “Slow Speed” product for upgrading sub-2Mbps rural lines and more.

The new information officially surfaced as part of BTWholesale’s ISP Forum event, which was held at the end of last month and is often used to brief Internet Service Providers (ISP) on the operator’s plans for the forthcoming year. In that sense the first forum of the New Year is usually the most interesting as we get a clearer roadmap and time-scales.

All of the plans and technologies that we’re about to talk about should already be familiar to most of our readers and as such we’re just going to do a simple summary of the most interesting highlights, albeit with a short explanation for those who might not be keeping such a close eye on industry developments.

But before we get started it’s worth noting that BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) powered Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) platform, which is the foundation for a lot of modern Internet connection technologies on the operator’s network, has now expanded its coverage to more than 94% of premises in the United Kingdom and moreis on the way (understandable given the Broadband Delivery UK targets). This is often a useful gauge for where more modern connectivity services might reach in the future.

bt_wholesale_broadband_connect_jan_2016

Speaking of “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) coverage, so far 72,000 related street cabinets have been installed for the service and well over 24 million premises are now able to order the service. However it’s worth noting that around 1,500 older 20CN telephone exchanges have also been adapted to support FTTC (VDSL).

Highlights from BT’s January 2016 ISP Forum

Tackling Sub-2Mbps Broadband Areas

Last year BTOpenreach hinted that one approach for helping to achieve the Government’s proposed 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) might be to conduct a “Slow Speed” technology trial for broadband lines that suffer from sub-2Mbps speeds (original news). It might also be possible via ADSL2+ from the street cabinet instead of exchange (here), but both approaches have their limits and problems.

We now know that this product, which has yet to be fully defined, could deliver download speeds of 18Mbps (2Mbps upload). A 6 month trial, which will start within the next few weeks or months (early 2016), is due to be conducted “with no commitment to launch after trial.” Apparently the trial “upgrade” will be limited to qualifying lines in specific geographic areas/cabinets and will only be available on an ISP’s existing services (BTWholesale will not participate in this trial).

Fibre-on-Demand Status

BTWholesale still has not set a date for lifting their “Stop Sell” on Fibre-on-Demand (FoD) orders, which allows ultrafast FTTP to be installed on lines that can get an FTTC service (albeit via a very expensive install process). This is almost certainly because Openreach are continuing to trial the FoD2 improvements to cut install times / costs, which is being conducted alongside their G.fast trials that are running until September 2016.

Incidentally the FoD2 trials have also been shown to push FTTP to top speeds of 960Mbps, although there’s still no firm date for when the long awaited 1Gbps FTTP product tier might surface.

FTTC/VDSL Vectoring

BT indicates that we might see a wider deployment of VDSL (FTTC) Vectoring technology, which is designed to improve broadband performance by combating cross-talk interference on copper lines. So far VDSL Vectoring has only been deployed in a very limited and selective way (here), although the latest update states that Openreach are now expecting a second DSLAM vendor enablement to happen “soon“, although BTWholesale is still awaiting a “deployment plan“.

Network Rearrangements (Tackling EOLs)

BT expect to conducted a lot more Network Rearrangements in the near future, which is what Openreach often does when they want to install a new FTTC street cabinet on long copper lines, Exchange Only Lines (EOL) or in busy areas in order to improve broadband speeds / cater for rising demand.

Apparently 2,800 street cabinets could be provided as part of this latest effort, which would be installed between February 2016 and finish in 2020/21. No doubt some of those will be funded by the Broadband Delivery UK programme as already happens.

G.fast Trials and Commercial Rollout

Yesterday’s results from BT revealed that the current G.fast trials would come to an end in September 2016, which represents an extension from the original spring 2016 completion window. As a result of that BT now say that they will conduct a larger scale pilot from Summer 2016, with the commercial launch being tentatively pegged for Summer 2017 (the first time we’ve seen a solid date for their UK roll-out).

The Summer 2016 pilot is expected to deliver “further functionality” (there’s currently no indication of what that means), while more detailed roll-out plans, pricing and device standards have yet to be finalised.

Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA)

Finally there’s a small update on the future SoGEA product, which people may know better as being Openreach’s solution for a truly standalone (naked) FTTC / VDSL “Fibre Broadband” line without also having to pay a separate rental for the phone service.

We’ve already revealed a lot of technical and trial details for the SoGEA service (here and here), although today’s update confirms a slightly adjusted time-scale for the trials. Apparently the “Alpha” trial will now start in October 2016, with a “Beta” trial set to follow in April 2017 and the final Pilot due to happen in August 2017.

At that rate we might not see a commercial SoGEA solution until early 2018.

The ISP Forum event also released plenty of other details, but we’ve covered nearly all of that in prior articles and have thus above chosen to only focus upon the new or changed developments in their roadmap.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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